Ying Chen’s Fiction
An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging
Rosalind Silvester
Click cover to enlarge Buy hardback at: Buy paperback at: Booksellers & libraries: | Research Monographs in French Studies 57 Legenda 28 September 2020 • 176pp ISBN: 978-1-781886-79-3 (hardback) • RRP £80, $110, €95 ISBN: 978-1-781886-80-9 (paperback, 29 January 2023 ISBN: 978-1-781886-81-6 (JSTOR ebook) Access online: Books@JSTOR ContemporaryFrenchFictionstudent-priced In addition to its original library hardback edition, this title is now on sale in the new student-priced Legenda paperback range. From accounts of migration and stories of personal alienation, through the fragmented memories of former incarnations, to fable-like tales of half-breeds and species metamorphosis, Ying Chen’s fiction evolves as it revolves around questions of difference, otherness and identity, which is never fixed or singular. While presenting the narrators’ inner preoccupations and, in some cases, unreliable nature, the increasingly complex texts of this francophone-Chinese writer (1961-) also reveal larger concerns about dominant discourses, the limitations of social realities, survival, and the relationship between beings, all framed within an aesthetics of non-belonging. Intriguingly, the author achieves this by consciously distancing her works, from 1998 onwards, from any categorisation by ethnicity. This engaging study considers Chen’s writing from the contemporary perspective of the breakdown of traditional spatiotemporal experiences, the homogenization of places, the erasure of cultural differences, and the resulting tendency towards universalism. Rosalind Silvester is Senior Lecturer in French Studies and Director of Education in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. Reviews:
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Bibliography entry: Silvester, Rosalind, Ying Chen’s Fiction: An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging, Research Monographs in French Studies, 57 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2020) First footnote reference: 35 Rosalind Silvester, Ying Chen’s Fiction: An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging, Research Monographs in French Studies, 57 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2020), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Silvester, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Silvester, Rosalind. 2020. Ying Chen’s Fiction: An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging, Research Monographs in French Studies, 57 (Cambridge: Legenda) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Silvester 2020: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Silvester 2020: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) This title is distributed on behalf of MHRA by Ingram’s. Booksellers and libraries can order direct from Ingram by setting up a free ipage® Account: click here for more. Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Ying-Chens-Fiction www.mhra.org.uk/publications/rmfs-57 |